


Freedom

by shykia1029



Series: Pre-Series Oneshots [3]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shykia1029/pseuds/shykia1029
Summary: Lilly has her first kiss when she’s eleven years old.





	Freedom

Lilly has her first kiss when she’s eleven years old. 

She’s at a sleepover at the house of some seventh grader who’d invited Lilly even though she was only a sixth grader and then, at Lilly’s insistence, Veronica even though she was only a fifth grader. 

They’re all sitting in a circle playing Never Have I Ever, Veronica right beside her. When someone confesses that she’s never kissed anyone, Lilly takes a long, dramatic sip of her drink. 

“You have not,” a girl across from her accuses, and Lilly shrugs. 

“Believe me, don’t believe me. I don’t give a shit.” She doesn’t look over at Veronica but hopes to god she’s got her poker face on. “But. Never have I ever…kissed a girl.” 

Giggles erupt around the circle, but nobody drinks. 

“None of us?” Lilly asks. “That’s a _travesty_. We must fix this.” 

She glances to her left at Veronica, who looks terrified, and smiles comfortingly. She, not Veronica, is the one who has to prove herself here. 

So she turns to her right, to a girl who she thinks is named Becky or Becca or something, grabs her chin, and goes for it. 

The rest of the girls scream with delight and when Lilly looks back at Veronica even she is giggling. 

“Don’t tell Celeste,” Lilly stage-whispers, and Veronica shakes her head and laughs out loud. 

  


She decides that after that she should probably get the first guy out of the way too, so a week later when Duncan comes home with one of his soccer buddies who she thinks is named Eddie she waits for him in the hallway outside the bathroom while he changes. 

When he appears, she pushes him against the bathroom door and presses their lips together for just a second, then pulls back, grinning. 

“I won’t tell Duncan if you won’t,” she says, and Eddie nods in agreement, eyes wide. 

  


Sometimes Lilly climbs out onto the roof outside her window and lets her legs dangle freely off the edge. 

She thinks about how fun it would be to just drop off the edge, freefall down past the kitchen window, maybe bounce off the trampoline if she placed it right. 

But despite what her mother says even Lilly wouldn’t do something that stupid. Whatever two second rush of freedom the fall would give her, she plans to live forever. 

So she picks leaves up off the roof and throws them out into the air to watch them fall instead. She wonders if this is why people go skydiving. 

  


When Lilly is thirteen, Duncan brings a new friend home after school and she meets Logan Echolls. 

Logan is intriguing. His father is definitely part of it but Logan himself is intriguing, too. He’s younger than her but he’s sweet and he blushes when he sees her in her bikini and he desperately wants to impress her. 

And somewhere under the sweetness, Lilly is pretty sure there’s a dark side that she can’t wait to bring out. 

  


She loses her virginity her freshman year at her first high school party. She brings Logan and Duncan along and invites Veronica but she’s too afraid to lie to her parents about whether there will be alcohol. 

But there are boys there from the other high school across town and she can see her boys anytime so she ditches them pretty quickly. 

By the keg she meets Steve, who pours her a beer but teases her about whether she’s legal and asks how old she is before he’ll give it to her. 

“Sixteen,” she lies without hesitation, holding out her hand. “Drink now.” 

It turns out Steve knows the hosts well enough to know where the most private closet is. 

“Is this your first time?” he asks huskily as soon as they’re alone in the dark. “If it’s your first time-“ 

“It’s not my first time,” she snaps, then kisses him hard before he can ask any more questions. 

  


Veronica agrees that of course, Logan likes her. But she also thinks Lilly needs to be careful with him. 

“He’s-“ Veronica says, then pauses, and Lilly can see the adjectives running through her mind as she rejects them, one by one. _Nice. Innocent. Young._ Logan is none of those. “He’s Logan, you know?” 

Lilly smiles and wonders how Veronica got so far in life without being able to see that nobody is completely _nice_ , everyone has the potential to be tough and strong and sharp if you just let them. 

“Well, you need to stop being so careful with Duncan,” she says. “You guys need to get a move on.” 

Veronica’s cheeks turn red. “Duncan doesn’t… He doesn’t like me like that.” 

Lilly snorts. “Try telling him that.” 

Then she tosses Veronica the halter top she’d been digging for and starts searching for her red heels because they match the dress she’s picked out for Madison Sinclair’s birthday party perfectly. 

  


That night, she gives Logan what she knows is his first kiss in the middle of a circle of cheering classmates. He’s hesitant then but later that night, when she kisses him again in private and puts her tongue in his mouth and guides one of his hands to her breast, he’s much less so. 

  


Lilly knows a lot of people, probably including the boy himself, don’t believe it, but she really loves Logan. 

She loves his surfer hair and stupid shell necklace. 

She loves how determined he is to learn how to kiss her and touch her and fuck her exactly as she wants him to. 

She loves that he has the balls to dump her when she goes too far but the heart to always come back. 

She loves that if she’s too big of a bitch he will snap at her or ignore her or yeah, even dump her but he never, ever actually asks for her to be anything other than what she is. 

She loves how they never have to say it but they both understand that he doesn’t ask if she’s ever with anyone else and she doesn’t ask where his bruises come from and that’s just fine with both of them. 

She loves how fiercely he loves her and her brother and her best friend. 

It should probably make her jealous, how much he loves her best friend. But it doesn’t, because he loves them in such completely opposite ways and she doesn’t need him to love her that way, she doesn’t need him to love her any way other than the way he does. 

  


Sometimes Lilly feels sorry for Duncan. 

Sure, he has their parents’ love and regard and favor. 

But there’s a freedom in being the unfavorite, a freedom he’ll never have. 

If you’re already a disappointment to someone, you don’t have to worry about disappointing them again. If you know you’ll never be accepted for who you are you can go totally all out who you are because what are they going to do, accept you less? 

She can fuck her boyfriend in her bedroom at home and leave the condom wrapper to be found by her mother because they already assume she’s fucking her boyfriend in her bedroom at home and confirmation isn’t going to make any difference. 

She knows Duncan and Veronica haven’t gone very far, more from being Veronica’s confidante than Duncan’s. But he still won’t risk sneaking her into his room, he’ll just take her out to the beach in his truck with the tinted windows. If they ever start having sex he’s going to have to get a hotel room or something, because Veronica is not Lilly and her first time is not going to be in the back of a car. Veronica’s first time is going to be fucking magical if Lilly has anything to say about it. 

  


One time, she and Logan fight more passionately than usual. She raises her hand as if to hit him but she isn’t actually going to _hit him_ , she’s just going to let her hand connect lightly with his face so they can both pretend it hurt more than it did and he can call her a bitch and storm out. 

But that doesn’t happen because as soon as she raises her hand he stops yelling and he flinches backwards and the light in his eyes just kind of shuts off. 

Her hand falls down by her side and she stares at him, and he stares at the floor before taking a deep breath and meeting her eyes. 

There’s a long silence that she finally breaks. 

“Logan.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I love you.” 

Then she kisses him and softly touches the side of his face where she was going to pretend to hurt him and he relaxes into her body, kissing back. 

That night they get wasted together and they fuck in his family’s pool. It’s slower and gentler then usual and she wonders if this is what people mean when they talk about making love. The next morning they wake up in pool house and they don’t talk about it. They never talk about it. 

  


Lilly loves her brother and she loves her boyfriend but sometimes she thinks she loves Veronica most of all. She sees a survey in a magazine or something about who she would save if she could only save one person from the Apocalypse and it’s always her. 

She doesn’t even think Logan or Duncan would mind that being her answer. It would probably be the answer for them too. 

And Lilly gets it. Because sweet, open, optimistic Veronica seems like she needs to be protected even though underneath Lilly sees clever, worldly, confident Veronica that she knows will make an appearance someday. And she’ll always need to be loved. And Lilly is fucking awesome but she’s well aware she would make a pretty bad half of the last two people on Earth. 

Veronica cries about her mother and how she found her vodka hidden in a water bottle in the fridge and she doesn’t know if she should tell her dad. 

And Lilly (even though she is fucking awesome) is also well aware that, as much as Celeste sucks, she isn’t the easiest child. And Veronica is, she loves both her parents so much and never misses Dessert for Dinner night and hates lying to them. So how hard is it for Lianne to sack up and be a parent to _Veronica_ of all children? 

But Lilly can’t say that to Veronica. All she can do is remind Veronica that she, too, is fucking awesome and she and Duncan and Logan love her and maybe they could all just run away to Europe and all be fabulous together. 

“We’ll leave all our clothes behind,” she says. “Go to Milan first and shop until we have a whole new wardrobe. All designer. Then Southern France, get our nude beach on. Nobody has tan lines there, Veronica. Nobody. I’ll bet if we find a guy with a hot enough accent Logan will _finally_ agree to that threeseome.” 

And Veronica laughs through her tears and rests her head in Lilly’s lap. 

“And we’ll live forever,” Lilly finishes softly, wiping away the tear tracks on Veronica’s cheeks. “We’ll all live forever.” 

  


When Lilly is seventeen, Duncan breaks up with Veronica. 

More accurately, he shatters Veronica’s heart by suddenly pretending she doesn’t exist. 

When she confronts him about it, she expects him to yell that it isn’t her business and maybe have one of those fits the family pretends don’t happen. Instead, he just looks at her, broken and defeated, and says, “If I tell you something, do you promise to never tell anyone else? Not even Veronica?” 

Lilly would probably say yes even if she was planning to break that promise. But this time she isn’t, and she doesn’t, she just goes back to school and tells Veronica that she needs to cut her stupid brother loose and find somebody who’s actually hot. 

  


There is no better expression of freedom, she finds, than doing something you’re really not supposed to do. 

You’re really not supposed to fuck the leader of the local motorcycle gang and secretly fantasize about the fight that would ensue if your boyfriend ever found out. 

You’re really, really not supposed to fuck your (ex, thanks to that skank Yolanda) boyfriend’s movie star father on the same bed in the pool house where you took your (ex) boyfriend’s virginity, just because you’d had another blowout the night before he took a road trip to Mexico. 

She’s really not supposed to so she does, and she’s never felt more free. 

Until later, when she’s speeding home with laughter in her chest and a pile of tapes on her passenger seat, and she feels even more free, so free that she runs a red light on a whim because she’s going to live forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where these keep coming from but they keep coming. Here's hoping my timeline makes sense.


End file.
